The Voyage of Noah's Ark—An Epilogue

Creation Evolution Journal

Title:

The Voyage of Noah's Ark—An Epilogue

Volume:

4

Number:

3

Quarter:

Summer

Page(s):

39–48

Year:

1983

Elmendorf Responds to Moore

Unaccustomed as I am to
defending the Bible (it's much more fun to attack evolution), I will only offer
a few specific comments about one particular aspect of Robert A. Moore's
lower-criticism article on Noah's Ark, having to do with the design and
construction of the vessel.

Before I do that, however, I want to commend
you on the special single-article issue of the C/E Journal. For its purpose, the
article seems to be very well written, even though the cargo of words is heavily
overloaded with straw men. I am sure that the evolutionary faithful out there
will be praising Darwin for such an "effective" attack on the Bible.

It is
obvious, however, that Moore's own between-the-lines speculation about what
actually happened has no more substance or validity than the between-the-lines
speculation of the creationist interpreters which he criticizes. With a hundred
and some years of history packed into only about sixty verses, it seems to me
that the account of the flood is made up mostly of "gaps," with only a few
tantalizing bits of data in between, leaving an awful lot of room for arbitrary
personal opinion.

Now back to the old arkeological drawing board. My
specific comments have to do with the sections on design and construction of the
Ark pages 1-5, and are as follows:

(1) I don't think the author gives Noah
or his civilization nearly enough credit. Noah himself was eleven times older
than I am and much closer to the original source of human intelligenceno doubt
enormously smarter and more experienced. Biblical chronology would indicate
roughly 1500 years from creation to the flood, which provides plenty of time for
the accumulation of a vast amount of human technological knowledge, if in fact
such was needed.

The idea that these were primitive nomads in long robes
trying to construct an impossible structure in the middle of nowhere with a
couple of axes is strictly from Sunday schoolone of Moore's straw men. For all
we know, Noah may have had both sophisticated know-how and extensive facilities
available to him for the project. Who's to prove otherwise?

While I marvel
at the accomplishment of such a large construction project, I do not by any means view it, like Mr. Moore, as
an "impossible" job, even as an individual much younger-and-dumber than
Noah.

- page 40 -

(2) I challenge Mr. Moore's assertion that "a shipyard in
nineteenth-century Maine would have been overwhelmed by the size and complexity
of this job." I happen to own and operate a small fabricating shop, and am
somewhat familiar with other such shops in this area. I daresay Mr. Moore would
be surprised at the "size and complexity" of the projects which are undertaken
in such modest facilities. I see building the ark as a tremendous engineering
and construction challenge, not an impossible dream, and I would actually love
to have been involved in such a project. Since I'm a little late on the scene
for that, I'll have to settle for speculating on how it might be done today if
someone ordered a wooden barge 45 x 75 x 450 ft., for "delivery" in the
year 2103.

(3) Metal working was apparently a known craft at
the time the ark was built (Genesis 4/22), so the vessel need not to have
been constructed of gopher wood only. My Timber Construction Manual
outlines modern design practice for large structures using various metal
fasteners, supports and accessories in addition to the timbers themselves. I see
no reason why the ark might not have been constructed the same way.

(4) Mr. Moore's notions about the ark being slammed about and reduced to
toothpicks simply do not seem valid for a vessel of that size and tonnage. It is
the smaller ships that get knocked around like corks in a rough sea, not the big
ones. I can visualize the ark plunging through sharp waves, but I cannot
visualize it bobbing rapidly like the miniature model which was tank-tested for
that film he refers to.

For that matter, nothing is given in the biblical
account about the sea conditions which actually occurred during the flood, so we
don't even know how rough the surface of the flood was, in order to determine
the "design conditions" for roll, pitch, slamming, hogging and sagging.

In
any case, the ark could have been designed as an internally-braced box (a very
strong shape) for its intended purpose as a floating barge. There would be no
need to get into the problems of propulsion and steering associated with sailing
ships. Barges of about the size of the ark are made today right here in
Pittsburgh.

(5) I visualize a design with the 45 x 75 foot
cross section being divided up into perhaps 15 ft. x 15 ft. x 15 ft. crate-like sub-sections, individually constructed in jigs in
repetitive fashion, or stick-built in place, to form a continuous lattice as
shown in the attached illustration [see p. 41, top].

Appropriate
X-bracing would be necessary of course, but need not be continuous once the
box-shape is established as a reference foundation, any more than the bracing in
a modem rectangular steel-framed building or a wood-frame house is continuous.
Some of the X-ing could also come from the partitions closing off the
naturally-formed "rooms" in the lattice structure, combining the functions of a
structural membrane and a partition.

- page 41 -

This design pattern, establishing
structural integrity and strength in each sub-structure, could be enlarged much
as a crystal structure grows to practically any size, and for practically any
service conditions, at least theoretically.

(6) Room-by-room, and
section-by-section, the large, very strong framework of the ark would be
constructed, needing only a skin of straight planks (no bending necessary!) and
a coat of pitch from the La Brea Tar Pit Co. to complete the job. Whether the
ark leaked like a sieve or not would depend on the specific fit and sealing of
the individual planks in the skin. Assuming that the work was carefully done and
the planks bolted or spiked in place, with provision for caulking if necessary
in the joints, I would see no problem in achieving a relatively watertight hull.
I have no idea what "gopher wood" was, but assume that it swelled when wet to
further seal the skin.

(7) Construction could proceed with a small crew,
using modular techniques as described. The "delivery time" was certainly long
enough, so careful planning would be justified. I see no need for 100,000 slaves
and NASA's nationwide facilities. The thing wasn't "delivered" anywhere, or even
"launched." It was floated into service. That certainly would have been
the "moment of truth" for the builders in more ways than one.

- page 42 -

(8) Now
what's the matter with that, you anti-biblical skeptics? If
you want to put my scheme to the
test, send me a purchase order, and I'll build the whole thing on my own,
property with four men!

Most of this is just my own brand of
between-the-lines speculation, of course, and I do not represent myself as any
kind of an "expert" on either shipbuilding or the Bible. It certainly makes
intelligent sense, however, at least from an engineering and fabricating
viewpoint, to consider the ark as a feasible, if ambitious, construction
project. It doesn't require a "thoroughly senseless level of supernaturalism" at
all, though I'm not discounting the necessity of that. It seems clear enough, at
least with respect to this section of the article, that Mr. Moore's views are
largely the result of a will-to-disbelieve rather than an intellectually honest
concern with the scientific problems of the Genesis flood.

R. G.
Elmendorf

Moore Replies to Elmendorf

The "straw men" which allegedly
populate my article are not of my construction but are the work of the
creationists themselves. I agree that the story in Genesis has many gaps, but
they have been so thoroughly filled in by the fundamentalists that I have no
need to set up any models of my own to demolish. And modern creationism is the
target of my criticisms, not ancient Semitic myths.

Elmendorf would like
to have an advanced pre-diluvian civilization easily capable of constructing the
ark. But as I asked in the article, if such a world existed, where is the
archaeological evidence for it? If the deluge occurred today, future researchers
would find billions of artifacts permitting a thorough reconstruction of 20th
century life, yet we are offered only the Paluxy River prints as evidence for
any human existence at all! I also noted that Noah and his sons survived the
flood by several centuries, but his "enormously" greater intelligence and
experience contributed nothing to redeveloping civilization. It is easy to
invent lost "Golden Ages"Atlantis, Cibola, Pre-Diluviabut without even one
artifact I cannot accept such stories.

One of the most important
"eyewitnesses" who has seen the ark on Mt. Ararat has stated that it was made
entirely of wood, including even the nails. But even if metal was used, it would
still not be strong enough; diagonal iron strapping was used on the six-masted
schooners, which still leaked and were at the limit for sound wood construction.
The highly skilled Maine shipyards built these largest of wooden boats, and
still they leaked and were unsafe on the open seas. Noah needed a vessel much
larger and stronger and completely secure. If the 19th century shipyards didn't
come close to achieving this, why should we believe Noah did?

- page 43 -

Elmendorf
ignored my objections to Noah obtaining pitch. He also
missed my references to very
large ships sinking in storms at sea. And he is simply wrong when he says that
we don't have any idea how rough the sea was: the Bible has a forty-day storm
burying the entire earth with water, even the mountain tops, and the "fountains
of the great deep" opening up, resulting in the annihilation of all life outside
the ark. We don't even need the addition of "flood geology" with its
mountain-building, volcanism, and continent-splitting to have a cataclysm no ship
could survive, but when we study the creationist model, it is clear that neither
Noah, any shipyard anywhere, nor Elmendorf could construct a vessel that could
make it.

Robert A. Moore

Farquhar Responds to
Moore

Congratulations on Volume XI (Volume 4, No. 1)! I was
delighted by Robert A. Moore's fascinating treatment of Noah's epic adventures.
As a biological oceanographer who has studied deep scattering layers for many
years, I often wondered how Noah accommodated mesopelagic fishes and crustaceans
which make daily vertical excursions of some hundreds of meters as part of their
normal behavior. Of course, in the creationists' antediluvian shallow seas,
these animals had not yet evolved. Certainly the creationists would agree,
though, that that vital element in the marine food chainthe phytoplanktonwas
there. One wonders how the myriad species of diatoms, nannoplankton, and other
photosynthetic forms were able to get along in the dark confines of the
Ark.

A few months ago, I began assembling notes and data for a book on the
legend of Noah. Robert Moore's work will be extremely valuable to
me.

While reading Mr. Moore's description of Noah's problems in feeding
the animals, I thought about those 800 species of bats, at least half of which
must be insectivorous. I had a mental picture of a stalwart crew member opening
a large box full of moths every evening so that 800 whirling bats could properly
eat. But then I rememberedbats hibernate.

G. Brooke Farquhar

Jukes
Responds to Moore

That was a great issue by Robert Moore. If he had added
some calculation on the water in the flood, it would have made the creationist
case even worse. In my item "Two By Two" in Vol. 285 of Nature (May 15,
1980) on page 130 I wrote the following:

- page 44 -

If rain fell to a depth of
10,000 ft. (a conservative estimate, insufficient to cover the mountains;
actually "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered" and
Mt. Ararat is 17,000 feet high), the volume of precipitation would have
been 393,000,000 cubic miles, which is 1.4 times that of all the water presently
on the earth. This rainfall occurred in 960 hours, at a daily rate of 104 ft. Its "drying up" took 167 days. Where did the water go? If it had rapidly
entered the interior of the Earth, one would have expected numerous
Krakatoa-like explosions. If it had escaped into outer space, why was not all
the hydrosphere simultaneously dissipated?

Thomas H. Jukes

Edwords
Replies to Jukes

Creationists
hold that the current waters in the oceans are the flood waters. Before the
flood, there were only streams and a few springs. All the water was either in
the vapor canopy above the earth (which kept out the ultraviolet light and thus
allowed there to be "giants in the earth in those days," and people living to
those great biblical ages) or below the earth's crust. Most of the water was
below so that when the "fountains of the great deep" opened up, all this water
came on to the earth.

Now creationists are clear that Ararat was not as
tall prior to the flood as it became during the flood. Everest didn't exist.
There were only rolling hills in pre-diluvian times. So the present oceans, and
the melting of the ice caps, could have covered everything. (Just imagine
dumping the continents into the oceans and creating a level earth. Then put the
present level of water over everything. That is roughly the creationist scenario
for the first weeks of the flood.)

However, during the flood, but after
the waters covered the highest mountains, mountain and continent formation
began. Ararat rose, Everest formed, and so forth. So the flood was a messy
affair, but there is no problem with where the water came from or went to.
Creationists solve one problem by creating ten others!

Frederick
Edwords

Jukes Replies Back to Edwords

I provided for an increased
elevation of Mt. Ararat (17,000 feet) during the flood when I allowed only
10,000 feet of water depth. And remember, Genesis 7:20 states that the mountains
were coverednot the "rolling hills." I had to postulate that the mountains were
10,000 feet high because many species are found only at high altitudes, and they
can't have evolved since the flood. Therefore they were taken on the
ark.

One correspondent actually took me to task for not submerging Mt.
Everest!

Thomas H. Jukes

- page 45 -

Chambers Responds to Moore

In
his last paragraph on page 10, concluding atop page 11, Moore writes,
"Obviously, nearly any concessions, any margins of error, can be granted to the
creationists within their geological framework and the flood water would
remain a churning, boiling inferno, easily accomplishing God's intention of
destroying the world." (Emphasis mine.)

I believe the statement I have
emphasized is scientifically incorrect. Water (H2O) boils at merely 212°Fahrenheit. Moore has noted his calculations giving 2,700° Centigrade, based on creationist claims.

The
two Soviet Venera spacecraft which perished on the surface of Venus were able to
transmit the information that the surface temperature at their landing sites was
between 485°C and 465°C, respectively. As you know, the surface of Venus contains no water, certainly no oceans.

Venutian surface pressure is 90 times that
of earth. Its clouds contain sulphuric acid droplets, which may combine with
flourine to make Venutian "rain" the most acid in the solar system. Carl Sagan
has hypothesized that by "terra-forming" Venus, we could make it earth-like
through the simple introduction of bacteria which produce oxygen, which could
live in its upper cloud layer which is more like earth's tropics
temperature-wise. This would not only change the chemical composition of
Venutian clouds, it would change the ratio of chemicals, reducing the surface
temperatures and allowing water to precipitate.

The main point in this
letter, however, is much more simple. It is that there would be no oceans
on earth at even 450°C. 212°F is enough, at sea level. Even less heat is needed on the Fahrenheit scale to
make the oceans boil at the height of Mt. Ararat, 16,945 ft. As any
mountain climber knows, water boils at lower temperatures the higher you
climb.

Simple boiling of water is enough to vaporize all the oceans of the
earth into steam. And only through cooling do the molecules reform into water
droplets.

The best Noah could have hoped for, with all that vulcanism, was
a boat with wheels until the earth cooled sufficiently to allow the
oceans to reprecipitate.

The Bible speaks of the flood waters receding,
but nowhere does it claim Noah and his captive zoo spent any time on dry land,
until settling on Ararat.

- page 46 -

No matter how foolish creationist claims may be,
there would simply be no oceans, no "churning, boiling inferno" as Moore has
allowed them.

Earth would be far more like Venus, with a staggering
increase in atmospheric pressure to ninety times that of earth, at even
450°C. At 2,700°C, I would speculate that
everything would be red hot lava, but I am uncertain on that
point.

Otherwise, I feel Moore has done splendidly. I would like to have
seen something done on the increase in the sheer weight of the planet with an
added mantle of at least 16,000 vertical feet of water. What would this do to
the earth's rotational speed? Slow it down, or stop it altogether, I'd
speculate. Or, possibly it might speed it up. I don't know. But in any case,
this is crucial, thanks to the laws of angular momentum (which, I suppose, God
would merely "amend" for a time). Dennis Rawlins and I worked this out once,
with the conclusion that it would slow or stop the earth, but not the Moon's
rotation, causing interesting problems with gravity, possibly the loss into the
outer stratosphere of everything not tied down, oceans and all, along with Mr.
and Mrs. Noah and their bestiary. (Yes, we allowed for the melting first of the
north and south polar ice-caps, but we used the height of Mt. Everest, almost
twice that of Ararat, on the assumption that God, perhaps not Noah, knew Everest
existed.)

Like David Milne always says, "creationism is more fun than
science"!

Bette Chambers

Osmon Replies to Chambers

Did Bette
Chambers really catch one? Did the oceans turn to steam? Did Moore give the
creationists oceans when they didn't deserve them? Well, it depends on how much
heat is available. It takes only a little heat to warm water (only one calorie
per gram of water to raise its temperature 1°C). But it takes a
lot of heat to convert hot water to steam. (It takes 540 calories to vaporize
one gram of water at boiling point.)

So the question is: was there enough
heat available to turn the water present to steam? To make her case, Ms.
Chambers must show that the creationist descriptions of this catastrophe provide
enough energy. Moore gives some clues for calculating this energy. For example,
Whitcomb and Morris talk about a gigantic catastrophe exceeding the energy of
hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Whitcomb speaks of hundreds of active volcanoes in a
later work. So perhaps there is enough energy. But can you hold the creationists
to this? Remember how they used to talk about half of the flood water coming
from the "vapor canopy"? In their current flood scenario the greater portion of
the water came from reservoirs in the earth (and poured out through
miraculous means). So if Ms.
Chambers succeeds, she will force creationists to make further amendments. The
whole exercise is valuable in exposing the artifice of the creation model as a
ploy for evangelizing in public schools.

Philip Osmon

- page 47 -

Chambers
Replies Back to Osmon

I simply have no
laboratory or other facilities for such a demonstration. Yet, something tells me
that Moore's own calculations, that the vulcanism and heat created by the
grinding of the earth's crust (plate tectonics taking place in so short a time)
would produce 2,700°C.

Moore cites his sources for that
estimation. And 2,700°C is damned hot. It is exactly six times
as hot as the landscape of Venus (450°C).

There are
more questions involved than how fast one could heat however many billion
kilotons of water. First, obviously, one must calculate how much water there
would be on the planet to achieve the scenario in the ark story. However, if
theories about Venus are correct, other elements and molecules undergo change as
well. Some hold Venus once had water vapor, at the very least. However, none
presently exists, or, so little as to be negligible. Instead, flourosulphuric
acid vapor forms the "rain" occurring on Venus. The notion of Carl Sagan that
Venus can be "terraformed" by the introduction of oxygen-producing bacteria
suggests that all sorts of different things happen to molecular combinations at
high temperatures, even 450°C, and that the release of
atmospheric oxygen would itself lower the Veneran temperatures to a more
earth-like level.

I "suspect" that given the year or so Noah had to be
puttering around with his bestiary, it would have become so hot at
2,700°C that the earth's oceans would have boiled
away.

But Mr. Osmon's point is terribly important. This needs
demonstration, not speculation. And, I can't demonstrate it. Can Moore?

Bette
Chambers

- page 48 -

Moore Replies to Chambers and Osmon

On the question of the
ocean's temperature, I would strongly suspect that 2,700°C would
be sufficient to overcome any vapor pressure or other obstacles and turn the
oceans into steam. The thought certainly occurred to me at the time I researched
it. However, I didn't pursue it primarily because my article focused on the ark
and its problems rather than on the flood per se, which deserves a story in its own right. For my purposes it
seemed adequate to show that the oceans would've been unsurvivably hot and
tumultuous; exactly how hot seemed less important. It would be
interesting to explore the various meteorological and geophysical difficulties
involved with the deluge. How could a severe storm last continuously over the
entire globe for forty days and nights? What unusual currents and waves would
form in a single worldwide ocean ravaged by hurricane winds, earthquakes, etc.?
What effect would all this chaos have on the earth's rotation-or even the
moon's? Could one even breathe if the air had a three billion years' supply of
volcanic dust in it? Would the oceans boil away? Such questions were beyond the
scope of my article, but I think the point I sought is established past any
doubt: no life could have survived the flood, either aboard ship or offand no
ark, however well built, could've survived either.